In addition to the Dirk Smilde Fellowship, the Qumran Institute of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies (University of Groningen) is delighted to present the Dirk Smilde Scholarship for excellent PhD students and postdocs in the fields of Hebrew Bible, early Judaism and Dead Sea Scrolls.

The scholarship amounts to € 1,000 a month. Regarding the duration of the scholarship, we offer a range between a minimum of three and a maximum of six months. This should start January 2014 at the earliest and end July 2014 at the latest.

Simultaneously, the 2013-2014 Dirk Smilde Fellow Prof. Dr. Steve Mason (University of Aberdeen) will also reside at the Qumran Institute of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies from January to May 2014.

The proposed research should fit within the Qumran Institute’s research theme “Cultural Encounters in the Ancient World”.

Awards are made on academic merit, evaluated by an academic committee.

The deadline is 31 October. Follow the link for application details. More on the Dirk Smilde Fellowship here.

Wednesday, October 02, 2013

CALL FOR PAPERS: The St Andrews Symposium for Biblical and Early Christian Studies. The Symposium takes place on 2-3 June 2014 and the subject is Ancient Readers & Their Scriptures: The Texts, Reading Strategies, and the Versions of the Hebrew Bible in Second Temple and Early Judaism. Follow the link for information on submitting a paper proposal (deadline 1 February 2014).

Just about every page of Talmud I read makes clear to me that the rabbis lived in a different world than we do. But this week’s Daf Yomi reading showed that this was true in the most literal sense: The world, for the rabbis, was not our planet Earth, a small blue planet orbiting the Sun in the vastness of empty space. To them, as to all educated people of their time, the Earth was the center of the universe, surrounded by a series of concentric spheres, the outermost of which was studded with stars. “The Jewish Sages,” according to Pesachim 94b, “say the celestial sphere is stationary, and the constellations revolve in their place within the sphere.” In this they differed from the Gentile sages, who “say the entire celestial sphere revolves, and the constellations are stationary within the sphere.”

The land of the historic Mor Gabriel Monastery will be returned to the Syriac community in Turkey as part of the “democratization package” announced by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan today, while the package fell short of meeting the expectations that the Halki Seminary could be reopened.